


shikata ga nai

by ilgaksu



Series: christmas '15 [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - McCarthyism, Japanese internment camps, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stories like ours aren’t supposed to swing around twice, darling. Stories like ours aren’t even supposed to exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shikata ga nai

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kevinkevinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kevinkevinson/gifts).



 

Stories like ours aren’t supposed to swing around twice, darling. Stories like ours aren’t even supposed to exist. They bury us alive, and we let them. Every single fucking time, we let them. It’s okay, darling. I’m not mad at you. It’s not like they give us a choice. 

*

Kuroo Tetsurou grows up seeing the world outside piecemeal, bisected, eyes hooking at the spaces between the grill of the fences that seal him off from the Great Beyond for the safety of the many. Tetsurou is ten years old by the end of the Japanese internment camps, and when they move out for the last time, he’s struck dumb by the vastness of that Great Beyond. God bless America. His mother holds his hand, their knuckles warped tight and together with the intensity of her grip. She’s afraid of losing him, after all this. 

“You doing okay, honey?” she asks him, the New Yorker still tripping off her tongue after two years. She tells people his father is dead. People don’t mind stories like that. Tetsurou is ten years old and he knows enough to know that. He wonders what school will be like, and worries about forgetting everything, about getting held back a grade. His mind becomes a skittering cacophony of his times tables in his brief, not unusual panic. The numbers are still there; he counts them in his head and then Tetsurou nods. His lungs fill with the space of the outside. His mother squeezes his hand. It’s meant to be reassuring. The wedding band she’s worn as long as Tetsurou has known her, which is always, which is forever, drags against his skin.

Five days ago, he’d met Daichi at their spot behind the canteen. It’s hard to find anywhere for anyone to fit in their camp, and Tetsurou is tall for his age. He’s going to be taller than Daichi, whatever Daichi says, but Daichi sulks whenever Tetsurou brings it up so he’s started not doing. 

“They’re letting us out,” Tetsurou had said, wild-eyed at the news, and he had seen the glimmer of the whites of Daichi’s eyes when Daichi had just blinked in reply, silent. “We’re going home.” 

Years later, Tetsurou will realise eleven-year-old Daichi had picked up on what ten-year-old Tetsurou hadn’t. Daichi was from California, a lifetime of sunlight and salt away, in a whole house made of stone instead of Tetsurou’s rickety tenement near Red Hook. What a difference twelve months had made between them, in the end. 

When Daichi had put his hands on Tetsurou’s shoulders, Tetsurou had jumped. He hadn’t been able to help it. 

“What are you -” he’d said, high-pitched, and - 

Years later, Tetsurou is gonna be one of the tallest in his graduating year. He’ll be salutatorian at his high school. He’ll change the subway twice on the way home to avoid some dickheads waiting to settle old debts that began with Tetsurou being Japanese and being queer, and never really ended. He’s stuck in the middle with that one, and bitterness becomes characteristic. Years later, Tetsurou is gonna kiss a barman in the Village and the bartop is gonna dig into his torso as he leans over into a kiss that is sweet, sticky, and a slow-burning fuck up. No Asian kid got out of the shadow of the war without being called kamikaze. Tetsurou’s eyes have always been blazing underneath the camouflage of his honour roll smile. 

Years later, Tetsurou is gonna turn on the barstool to face the same barman he kissed at twenty and he’s gonna laugh,  _ what, my first kiss? I’ve had worse.  _ The barman will cuff the back of his head and pour him another drink, the dip and flash of his inner wrist catching Tetsurou’s eye like it did at twenty, and Tetsurou won’t say: 

All I could smell was the cheap slip of the frying oil from the canteen. I was scared. I have never been closer to being caught by someone in uniform. His lips were chapped. My pulse was a hummingbird. I wanted, absurdly, to call for help, even though I knew I was beyond it. It was over too fast, and when they let me out of there five days later there was part of me still cocooned in that stupid, awkward, uncomfortable kiss; part of me was still numbed by it; I fell in love with a boy at ten years old and my mom mistook it for a bad cold.

I fell in love with a boy at ten years old, and we all mistook it for illness. 

*

In the elevator of the publishing house where Daichi works, Daichi and the attendant are pretending not to look at each other. Daichi tugs at his cuffs, his waistcoat, then stops. They lock eyes for a long time. Daichi looks at the curve of where the attendant’s neck sweeps into his shoulder. The attendant opens his mouth, but too late, it’s Daichi’s stop, and he smiles half-apologetically as he steps out into the foyer. Fawn brogues on veined marble; Daichi shares a brownstone apartment with Koushi, the childhood friend he’d been returned to when they’d both been sent back from their respective encampments. He tries not to think about those two years that much anymore. Two years out of twenty-seven; surely the twenty-five left can be enough? What kind of arrogance would it take, for him to suggest a quarter of a century as unsatisfying by itself? Daichi has carved a life from just enough, waste not want not, don’t think of boys with Icarus eyes and the men they may have survived into. When your teeth cut into the apple, be cautious of the core: there lies cyanide. 

Daichi turns to head for home. Which is, of course, when someone picks a fight in the foyer with the receptionist. It’s a Monday. Daichi turns, and the briefcase in his hand is heavy, and the man at the desk’s scarf drips over one shoulder like a scarlet tear, and Daichi doesn’t like men with loud voices. 

“Look,” the man says, his hair a mess, lowering his voice, both hands palms-down on the desk, “There’s gotta be something. I’ve walked up and down all the goddamned day. I can wait.”

The receptionist’s eyes flicker to Daichi. 

“We’re closed for the day,” Daichi says, tries not to sound cruel with it. The way the man holds his body says desperation without him ever having to open his mouth; Daichi hasn’t even seen his face yet. He sees the catch and release of the man’s shoulders before he turns, tired in a grey coat; the sort of tired that gets into the bones and Daichi pretends not to get whilst Koushi gives him a long, silent, eloquent look over the wireless. 

“I’ve got a friend,” the man says, “And he’s in trouble.”   

His eyes are burning and red-rimmed and Daichi doesn’t know what to say. 

“Go to the police,” he finally suggests, flatly, and the man laughs, short and sharp like the first jolt of physicality. Everyone’s trying to sell you something; he’s got a story, Daichi thinks, and thinks of the empty third floor he’d passed in the elevator, and it makes sense now. “If you’re looking for the Tribune, it moved offices last week. It’s downtown now.”

The fight goes out of the man so suddenly, like falling from a great height, that Daichi almost steps forward to catch him. Daichi is very aware of the receptionist’s eyes, and of the freckles that show up in the electric light on the man’s face; he’s aware of the cold of a New York winter outside, and how young the man is, in the slope of his cyanide eyes and the ridge of his jaw, and - 

Daichi cuts that thought off. He never takes anyone home. 

“There’s a coffee joint around the corner,” Daichi finds himself saying. “I’m going there now. I’m sorry about your friend,” and leaves, hoping against hope the man picks things up fast. 

Five minutes later, the man slides into the opposite seat on the booth. Daichi shifts, the slight crackle-stick of the vinyl against his back, and keeps his hands curled around his mug. This is stupid. Daichi doesn’t take risks, but Daichi hooked his want somewhere around this stranger’s shoulders and it’s cold outside, waste not want not and Daichi thinks a lot about Icarus’ father sometimes, how we never hear of what happened to the one who was sensible - 

His heart is a hummingbird. He can taste frying oil in the air. 

“Do I know you from somewhere?” the man asks, and raises his eyebrows when he spots the second cup of coffee next to Daichi. “Waiting for someone, are you?”

“Yes,” Daichi says, keeps eye contact and pushes the cup forward. The man flushes, coughs, takes it. Daichi wonders if he’s old enough to have been in the camps. No, scratch that: Daichi wonders if he’s old enough to remember being in the camps. “What’s your name?” 

“Tetsurou,” the man says, “Tetsurou Kuroo,” and Daichi chokes on his coffee.

*

They fall into bed for the first time like falling into line for a roll call; instinctive, muscle memory and it’s like searching for the song on the wireless amidst the static.

“It’s been a while,” Daichi (Daichi, Daichi, _Daichi_ alive and adult) admits after the hotel door is double-locked behind them. It’s been five hours, seven cups of coffee, an all-night pizzeria, ten blocks. It’s been sixteen years, 2,915.5 miles, Daichi’s ankle hooked around Tetsurou’s foot beneath the table in the half-dark, and later Tetsurou’s hand catching Daichi’s wrist in return, glancing around before putting it on his own thigh, the clarity of the rip-torn winter wind doing nothing against the hysteria. 

“It sure has,” Tetsurou says, and moves in to kiss him for the first (second) time, hands braced on the door. He feels sick with anticipation. Daichi, in his three-piece suit and his wristwatch, is a fashion plate, and Tetsurou has been having increasing thoughts of desecration for five whole hours. 

“No,” Daichi says, rolling his eyes and Tetsurou’s delighted even by that because it echoes against memory and comes away good, comes away resonant, “No, I mean. It’s been a while since - for me -"

“Ah,” Tetsurou says, and remembers suddenly to be embarrassed. He remembers he’s supposed to be helping Lev, helping Yaku, helping them out because the Village took in an angry nervous twenty year old without swallowing him whole. He’s not supposed to be running off into the night like a film script. “I can go? I should go. Yaku will be waiting for me. I can go.”

“There’s a telephone down the hall,” Daichi says quietly, watching Tetsurou’s face. “You can go,” and Tetsurou’s heart dips, quick and ugly, before Daichi fixes him with a steady look and says, “And ring him. Tell him you’ve got a lawyer. Maybe. Potentially. I’ll ask Koushi tomorrow. Then come back. He has documents, right?”

“Of course he does. Lev’s more Brooklyn than Moscow, as far as the law. It’s just his birth certificate and their bullshit fucking him over at this point. Does your friend even take cases like this?” 

Lev Haiba is a dumb Red Hook kid with a bleeding heart, and he’s been living with Yaku above his bar for the last six months. Yaku had said: listen to me, Lev. Yaku had said: are you listening? Look at me. This is serious. 

I’m always looking at you, Morisuke. 

Lev, please.

Yaku had said: have you been reading the papers? And Lev said, it’s hard not to, Morisuke. Yaku said: when we next get raided, when the police next come knocking on our doors, you’re out the back door before they can pin you for a Communist as well as queer. You’re half-Russian and half-Japanese and that’s not good to be right now. 

I know what I am, Morisuke. I know. 

I’m sorry, honey. When we next get raided, you run to Tetsurou’s flat, and you don’t look back, you hear me? If Tetsurou isn’t in, keep knocking: Kenma will answer the door.  You don’t come back until I come for you. You don’t come back, you don’t. 

A week ago, they got the usual raid, and Lev Haiba is a dumb Red Hook kid with a bleeding heart, and he ran right back in for Yaku because. Because he’s Lev Haiba, and Yaku calls him _honey_ and Lev looks at Yaku like -  

“Why the fuck would he do that?” Yaku had spat, morose on the fire exit, chain-smoking miserably and Tetsurou had thought: they’re trying to burn us all up. So each man kills the thing he loves. That bastard McCarthy better rot in hell; if we’re there too, at least, we can make sure of it. 

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Daichi says carefully, back in the now, “Not for Koushi,” and Tetsurou hears: _one of us._

“When you say _friend_ ,” Tetsurou begins, sliding on a smile, and Daichi frowns and swats his arm. 

“Go. Come back.” 

“What, again?” Tetsurou says, laughing, and Daichi starts their second kiss just to shut him up, which is about right, which is about perfect, which is about history repeating itself. 

**Author's Note:**

> "So each man kills the thing he loves" is a reference to Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. 
> 
> "Shikata ga nai" is a Japanese language phrase meaning "it cannot be helped" or "nothing can be done about it".  
> Historically, it has been applied to situations in which masses of Japanese people as a whole have been made to endure, including the Allied occupation of Japan and the internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians. In Asian American Women: The "Frontiers" Reader, author Debbie Storrs states:
> 
> The Japanese phrase shikata ga nai, or "it can't be helped," indicates cultural norms over which one has little control... This notion of suffering in part stems from shikata ga nai: failing to follow cultural norms and social conventions led to a life of little choice but endurance of suffering.
> 
> \- Wikipedia.


End file.
